Crusaders (8 page)

Pallister looked to have recovered his cocksureness. ‘Well, me and the Reverend here might see it different,’ he said, winking at John, who suddenly saw a certain appeal in the man’s rather louche assurance. Then Pallister seemed to dismiss the altercation with a flick of the wrist. ‘So listen, Paul, what’s the good word then? Are the miners going out this year or not?’

Todd, startled, mustered a shrug. ‘Whey, everybody reckons we’ll get shafted on the pay round, but, I dunno – wouldn’t be the best time for it.’

‘There’s never a good time, son.’

‘Aye, well, if we do strike then it won’t be much to look at, I don’t reckon. I doubt we’ll even need pickets. I mean, everybody feels the same. Y’knaa Durham, it’s middle-of-the-road, always has been.’

Pallister scowled. ‘That’s weak analysis, that, man. Naw, I
reckon
you’ll have a battle this time. Scargill’s not Joe Gormley. He’ll not get the engineers out to help him neither. Used to be the
miners
went out if the nurses weren’t getting. You’ll not ever see
that
again. Proper fight brewing now.’

‘Ha,’ Susannah enunciated crisply. ‘And where’ll
you
be when it starts?’

Her effrontery must have kindled some defiance in silent Polly, for she stroked a deft hand over Pallister’s on the tabletop. ‘Quite. Macho man.’

Pallister recoiled, a little too sharply. ‘I’m not talking …
punch-ups
, man. Revolutionary politics aren’t just about
violence
. It’s about people united, pushing in the same direction.
That’s
the power of it.’ He leaned back in his seat, his grin reinstated. ‘Saying that – a bit violence can go a long way.’

‘Revolutions,’ Susannah sniffed, ‘aren’t started by a lot of big talk down the pub.’

‘Actually,
bonny lass
,’ said Pallister, winking again at John over the rim of his glass, ‘I think you’ll find there’s a few went off in just that very manner.’

Paul set down his drained pint. ‘Another, eh?’

Polly, though, was collecting her belongings. ‘Martin, I’m off.’

‘
Don’t
go, c’mon, stop on.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ she said to the table, lightly and devoid of sincerity. Pallister laid a hand on her but she shrugged it aside and pushed her way out of the double doors to the street. In the abashed silence that followed, Pallister rubbed the grain of his stubble.

‘You headed back north tonight, Martin?’ Paul tried, finally.

‘Nah, I’m stopping over. Least I thought I was.’ Pallister’s grin had revived. ‘I might end up out in the kennel. Look, I’d best get on.’ He rose and swept up his smoking apparatus. ‘Cheerio, Paul. Nice to meet
you
, sunshine.’ He patted John’s shoulder. ‘Bye then, Mrs T,’ he fired gratuitously at Susannah. Then he hustled out into the greying afternoon.

‘Some bloke, isn’t he?’ Paul clucked his tongue.

‘Seemed like the standard lefty lout to me,’ offered Susannah.

‘Some of that,’ John murmured, ‘was for your benefit, I thought.’

Witheringly Susannah beheld her brother. ‘Oh Jonno, pay
attention
, will you? Quite apart from that poor cow sat with him – he was wearing a wedding ring.’ And she leaned back in her chair, lip curling, the imperious effect undermined but slightly by one more pop-eyed blink.

For some months after his day-trip John would, in idle moments, toy with the fancy that he might once more run into Martin Pallister and his lovely girlfriend. He saw himself performing more capably in the cut-and-thrust next time. But it was not to be. Nor did Paul Todd make good a cheery pledge to ring him up. And yet, one day in the late summer of the following year, they met again.

John had taken the bus to Newcastle in search of a small token to offer at a family dinner in honour of his father’s promotion to
Chief Supervisor, Durham Region. Anew Montego was in the offing, and for Bill there would be no more knocking on the doors of old gadgies. Such was the largesse of the newly privatised ‘British Telecom’. Thankful news in all, though to John the home front was of receding significance, for within the month he was due to take up a college place on the south-east coast.

Headed for Eldon Square, the enclosed shopping complex of gaudy arcades that squatted and snaked through the centre of the city, he dawdled down Blackett Street toward the familiar
mooring
of the Earl Grey Monument, its fluted stone column soaring a hundred feet from a fat plinth set on a base itself taller than a man. To one side a small assembly was in progress, two dozen bodies shuffling in close proximity. John came closer. Collection tins were being rattled.

‘Support the miners there. Support the striking miners …’

The most voluble of the collectors was a handsomely aged sort, wearing a black donkey jacket over dungarees, his good head of greying hair swept back and piled up like some 1950s Teddy boy. Then the man raised and flexed his right arm, and John saw first a void at the end of his coat sleeve, then – for it protruded only slightly – the metal split-hook of an amputee.

A squall of audio feedback rent the air, and heads turned toward the foot of the Monument. There, a lean and beak-nosed lad, wearing a loose-necked tee-shirt with the legend
NEITHER WASHINGTON NOR MOSCOW
, was unravelling a microphone from a PA and amp adorned with peeling decal stickers.
BAUHAUS, THEATRE OF HATE, SOUTHERN DEATH CULT
.

Hello, Paul
, thought John,
you’ve had a haircut
.

‘How do, I’m Paul Todd, Durham Mechanics NUM –’

Paul thrust the microphone apart from him momentarily, allowed feedback to crackle and abate, then glanced down nervily at a handwritten page.

‘I’m gunna just say a few words, about the strike, why we need your support. You’ve all seen the Tory press bang on about Scargill and
ballots
, cos that’s all they know how. But we’re in agreement, and we always have been. This is a straight fight. The lines have been drawn, aye?’

He didn’t read eloquently, John decided, and his whole demeanour seemed glad of the amplification. But he surely had conviction.

‘The other day I was down Wearmouth. Aye, it’s got as bad as that.’
A ripple of supportive laughter. John joined on to its tail.
‘We saw a pair of scabs driven through the gates into that pit at maniac speed. Like pop stars. Proud of themselves, eh? And, right enough, we’ll not forget their names, or their faces neither, I’ll promise you that.’

This elicited a shower of applause and a raucous hoot. John glanced over to see the Teddy boy cheering as he applauded, banging his left fist onto his right shoulder and chest. A proud sort of gesture, thought John, like some Politburo bigwig applauding the October parade.

A pair of police officers in summery shirtsleeves had drifted into John’s field of vision from the corner of Pilgrim Street and were standing at a meaningful distance, stock-still amid passing shoppers. One now folded his arms. John was unnerved. True, they possibly seemed a scruffy lot, loitering so near to Berry’s the jeweller and the day’s peaceable commerce.

Meanwhile, someone near to his shoulder was unhappy. A brawny black-bearded man was jabbing the air, heckling Paul. ‘See when all this started? Youse lot were talking big about mass action, rank and file, all this. Then you slink off and we don’t hear a shaggin’
word
out of you’s, not for
months
.’

John did not look for Paul Todd’s reaction, his eyes fixed on the two police officers as they started to take purposeful steps toward the assembly.

The one-armed man had his good hand on Paul’s back, seeming to steer him apart and away from the fray. John dogged their steps down Pilgrim Street until close enough to tap on Paul’s shoulder, and was met with a hard look that relented with recognition. Paul introduced ‘Joe Pallister’ and John thrust out his right hand, then cursed himself for the worst kind of idiot. But Mr Pallister put out his good left, twisted, grasped John’s dangling right and shook heartily in topsy-turvy fashion.

‘Divvint worry, kidder, takes a while to get it. Took me long enough.’

Paul was stealing looks back up from whence they had come. ‘John, we’re away off down to Joe’s shop, if you want to come with.’

They turned off smartly into the narrow east–west side street of High Bridge, and John scuttled along in their stead. ‘That was a bit sticky back there,’ he ventured.

‘Keeps wuh on wor toes,’ Joe tossed back over his shoulder. ‘This one here but, he’s in bother already.’

Paul was smiling mildly. ‘Got me’sel into a barney a while back, see, John. On a picket. Done for breach of the peace, obstructing an officer.’

‘God. What happened?’

‘Got fined, banned from off the picket lines. And any Coal Board property.’

‘God. Isn’t it risky then? To still be – doing stuff?’

‘No choice, man. We need bodies. If you saw all the coppers they’ve got in.’

They had slipped into the narrow wind of Pink Lane, where Joe pulled up in front of a small commercial premises and fished in his pocket. The cramped window display was full of worthy faded paperbacks, and a painted awning read NINE HOURS BOOKS. Inside, John keenly inspected the shelves and stacked front tables – remainders and second-hand editions of Christopher Hill and E. P. Thompson. He had not known the Trades Union Congress published so widely. Mr Pallister pressed a button on an answering machine that clicked and whirred. Hearing a woman’s voice, he frowned and waved at his guests. ‘You’s gan on in the back, eh?’

Paul led John into a windowless boxroom set with a work desk and chair, one set of shelves and a metal filing cabinet. Paul did not sit, and still seemed preoccupied.

‘So what all else are you involved with? With the strike?’

‘Well, you’ve maybe heard, there’s a lot goes into stopping them shifting coal about the place. From the private mines, the
open cast. Blyth. Tow Law.’ Paul grinned.
They’re
not Coal Board property.’

‘And how did you meet –?’ John jerked his head toward the door.

‘Joe? At a demo. He’s sound as hell is Joe. Martin Pallister’s dad, y’knaa? But he’s the real thing, Joe. Used to be foreman up at Alderton Works? Tell you, I’ve made some proper friends on this strike. Some right clever people. Lawyers, writers – it’s funny, but it’s true. I’ve lost friends and all.’ He shrugged. ‘Tell you,
everything
I thought before all this started? It was just wrong. I was
dreaming
.’

Joe entered, squeezing past his juniors, took the seat behind the desk and set down a biscuit tin on top of a ledger book. With his left hand he pushed the tin flush to his impaired right forearm and began to withdraw coins and notes carefully with the good hand, stacking the coins by denomination.

‘Can I ask?’ John ventured. ‘Why’s the shop called Nine Hours?’

‘You never heard of the Nine Hours’ Strike, kidder? Eighteen seventy-one, engineers striking for an hour off the working day. Started in Sunderland, spread to Newcastle. The bosses brung in foreign blacklegs, see, so the leaders went and petitioned Marx hisself. It were Marx translated their leaflets into foreign, to gan all round the continent.’

Marx himself!
John was still marvelling quietly as Joe held up a pound note barely held together with tape. ‘Damn it, what bugger give us that?’

As Pallister groused into his chest, John glanced at Paul. ‘Are you okay for money?’

‘Well, I divvint buy so many records … But I’ve not got kids. Me girlfriend’s mam and dad have give us a hand. They’re not mad keen. Michelle’s not mad herself.’

A tutting sound issued from Joe, his eyes flicking upward. ‘Women, see,
reactionary
tendencies.’ But he was surely kidding, for his face had puckered in amusement, and he began to whistle a tune John recalled vaguely as one from
My Fair Lady
.

With a robber’s stealth John turned his key in the latch, then stood in the hushed hallway at the threshold of the dining room, cursing himself. Ahead of him the kitchen was deserted, but the oven was still lit and shuddering. A bad sign. He peered into the dining room through the doorjamb. Bill sat alone at the table, lit only by the sideboard lamps, a mug of tea steaming unattended before him. Similarly neglected was an unopened bottle of champagne, shiny blue ribbon tangled at its neck.

There was a heavy tread on the stairs behind him, and he turned to see his mother, wearing the white silk blouse she wore for special parties.

‘Where
were
you, John?’ she hissed. He held up his hands in futile contrition. ‘Just get in there and say you’re sorry, will you?’

He sloped into the dining room, Audrey behind him. His father looked up, wan, his silver helmet-fringe looking to have suffered a comb.

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I lost track of time.’

Bill let out a sigh that must have inflated within him over a silent hour or so. ‘You
make
time, John. You can always make time. When you’re bothered to.’

John realised to his great surprise that he would have rather his father had been blazingly angry. ‘There was this demo for the miners. I met a mate, we got talking.’

‘Oh, friend of yours, eh?’

‘A miner. From Sacriston. Bloke I met in London on that CND march.’

A compound of meagre causes to Bill’s hearing, John didn’t doubt. His father put his hands round his mug and stared down for some moments.

‘John, shall I tell you a story? Back in, must have been, nineteen fifty-one? My dad, your grandda, one morning he told us get dressed and took us down to Bearpark. To meet the training
officer
. I was sixteen. Wasn’t doing so badly at school. But there I was, Bearpark Colliery. And we were talking about a job. A job for me. And next thing I knew, I was in. Nee bother. I was in, cos me dad was a great bloke.’ John nodded, as he had been nodding, but Bill
scowled. ‘Like that was all I was
good
for. See? It wasn’t what
I
wanted. It wasn’t what anyone I
knew
wanted. Who’d want to work down there? Your granddad even, you think he’d have
chosen
that?’